DIASPRELL

Chinatown Soup is delighted to present Diasprell, a Soup Group show celebrating the flower as muse that is on view from April 28 - May 15, 2022. This exhibition features a collection of flowers by nine different artists in homage to the Jocs Florals (Floral Games), a series of historically related poetry contests with floral prizes. Perhaps inspired by the ancient Roman celebration of Floralia, held in honor of the spring Goddess Flora, variations of this ritual span centuries, and we are delighted to revive its spirit today.

Participating artists each contributed a statement about their relationship with flower subjects, including messages reflective of themselves, ancestral pathways, and universal symbolism.

We'll be hosting an open mic series throughout the run of the show, featuring live poetry and music, as the Floral Games are an extended public festival that we intend to reimagine in full bloom. 

Ronaldy Navarro

Las flores más hermosas son las del desierto pues llenan de colores su inmensidad. 

Ronaldy Navarro was born in Sabanilla del Encomendador in Matanzas, Cuba—a little town where he cannot remember anyone making art. His Afro-Cuban neighborhood was defined by its practice of shamanism and, while at times unaccepting of his mixed Spanish and Chinese ancestry, its appreciation of raw beauty and natural power inspired Ronny to express himself. At the age of 12, he enrolled at the province’s School of the Arts, beginning years of clashing with institutional education that led him to reside in New York, “the city of artists,” in 2007. Here, Ronny has made remarkable friendships, which encourage him to continue creating. When Ronny isn’t making his own work, he’s installing work made by others as a professional art handler. 

Grecy Pricila Ruiz Rodriguez

This blanket is designed with four types of Amazonian flowering plants, including Marusa, Ayahuasca, and Pion. It is protected with the ikaros (songs) of Bobinsana and Renaquilla. The plants work together so that pasajeros experience positive visions. For the person who has it, this beautiful blanket will protect the whole family from all manner of evil spirits, and I offer it with a lot of love and affection. 

Grecy Pricila Ruiz Rodriguez (b. 1990, Comunidad Nativa Holanda de Yarinacocha, Ucayali, Peru) is an artist based at the Niwe Rao medicinal plant healing center run by her grandmother Maestra Ines, near the jungle city of Pullcalpa. Here, Pricila weaves tapestries in the tradition of her indigenous maternal lineage. Shipibo art is known for its intricate geometric patterning, which represents the language of nature as their healers understand it through plant medicine. Shipibo women learn the craft of their culture’s designs from an early age, and those who take the learning path to become healers integrate these patterns into their shamanic work through the power of song. Pricila intends for her ancestral art to serve as a teaching for the youth of her community and beyond.

Kirza Lopez

Petunias carry the meaning of not losing hope, and I wanted to immortalize that symbolism as a reminder to myself. I love the idea of plants deciding to come into our reality to tell us a message or bring support in the middle of intense life experiences. Painting these also brought forth gratitude and the practice of patience.

Kirza Lopez is a self-taught artist from Puerto Rico. Growing up, Lopez created art as a hobby, usually painting plants and animals or making small surrealist drawings. Lopez graduated from Valencia College with a degree in radiography and worked in the healthcare field until 2017. She transitioned to the art field full-time, working as an artist assistant and painting large-scale murals across Florida and in cities around the world, such as New York, Denver, and Copenhagen. Over the past couple of years, Lopez has refined her own artistic skills and ventured on a path of self-discovery, which translates into her art. In her work, she explores the concepts of human connection and self-healing through the act of painting and how balance and life are interrelated.

Natalia Yovane

Mapacho (Nicotiana rustica) is the sacred tobacco from the Amazon jungle. Mapacho in Quechua is described as the "bridge" between this world and the other dimensions. Its strength is used in ceremonies for cleansing, protection, moving energy, and for keeping our words true and our songs and prayers elevated. 

Natalia Yovane, a Chilean medicine woman and artist, has lived and traveled around the world learning from masterful elders that have supported and encouraged her on her path to help others with the influences of plant medicines. Magnetized to different lineages from the Andes mountains to the Amazon jungle, Natalia connects us to the knowledge and wisdom of her teachers. Her greatest teachings come from the simplicity of observing nature, which is an essential inspiration to her drawings characterized as visual medicine. She earned both MFA and BFA degrees from the School of Visual Arts. She has exhibited in museums and galleries extensively throughout NYC and Miami as well as internationally in Sweden and Italy. Her achievements have been published in The New York Times and The Miami Herald.

Jamie Steiger

A vision of a young woman. Standing. A downtown loft with a long, low chaise. In cream. A rose grows from the wall. Splattered. Deconstructed. Modern. Triumphant. Your medium is people. The ancestors say, “Good job.”

Jaime Steiger (b.1987 Bellport, NY) shows her commitment to line, texture, and the internal search of identity through painting. She creates bodies of work with an epistemological focus, using less common mediums, such as ink and gesso, on large-scale canvas to palm-sized panels, reflecting the unexpected diversity present within universal truths. Her work has been shown at Con Artist Collective in the Lower East Side, Demi-Monde Cafe in Brooklyn, and Chinatown Soup. Jaime received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2010 and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. 

Yen Yen Chou

Hellebores, also called ‘Lenten roses’ and ‘Christmas roses,’ are a group of species and hybrids in the Ranunculaceae, or buttercup family. The scientific name Helleborus could derive from the Ancient Greek word helléboros and translates literally to "injure food." I'm fascinated by its dualities of having both medicinal and toxic properties and hope to explore more about it through the making of this piece. 

Yen Yen (b. 1992, Taipei, Taiwan) is an artist based in Taipei and Brooklyn. Yen Yen is a beloved alumnus of the artist residency at Soup Studio, and she has participated in a number of group exhibitions at spaces including Dinner Gallery, New York, NY; Fridman Gallery, New York, NY; Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Brooklyn, NY; Chinatown Soup, New York, NY; Gallery Cubed, New York, NY; and Prince Street Gallery, New York, NY. She has also curated shows at SPRING/BREAK Art Show New York City and Tutu Gallery in Brooklyn, NY.

Vincent Donato

I have chosen my subject as a reflection of my own mortality. This is represented through my depiction of the Rose, used as a Memento. The work should feel like it’s been here for centuries, beaten but alive, strong but fragile–just like the Rose. My subject is carefully executed through select mediums to convey a broken down, abstracted visual with an aura of the detrimental. 

Vincent Donato Roselli is a self-taught conceptual and abstract artist. He was born into a family of artists and raised in Staten Island, NY. His first exposure to art was graffiti, and he continues to connect old school graffiti methods with his current work process. Vincent chooses to work within a chaotic studio space in which the materials he uses consist of the dust on the floor to the old brush water left in glass jars displayed throughout. He also likes to work with distorted brushes to cross mediums by utilizing plaster, beeswax, oil paint, pigments, and more. In addition to painting, Vincent constructs sculptural pieces as mobile or mounted works that are created mainly from annealed steel wire and mixed industrial mediums.

Masa Shigeta

I like the Passion Flower. The complexity of the inner structure of the Passion Flower is very interesting. The Passion Flower is called ‘Clock Flower' in Japanese. The Passion Flower looks like a gear with a bearing, and whenever I see it it looks like it starts moving, like a clock. I found this particular flower in the front of a shop around Astoria. Everywhere else was locked down. The city was quiet, but this flower didn’t stop.

Masamitsu Shigeta  (b. 1992, Tokyo, Japan) currently works in New York City. As a painter and craftsman, Masa embraces a variety of mediums to deliver visions of streetscapes and wild nature into transcendence. He honors the traditional role of the frame as completing a work on canvas by handcrafting unique pieces for each of his paintings. Masa holds a BFA from the School of Visual Arts and an MFA at New York University. His work has been exhibited at Chinatown Soup, Tutu Gallery, and Situations Gallery in New York, with future shows opening in Los Angeles next year. 

Birdie Hall

Datura is the mother plant that heals and destroys. The flower blooms like moonlight and punishes those who misuse its thorn-apple. 

Birdie Hall (b. 1994) is an artist based in Montana and New York. Her paintings, etchings, drawings, and soft sculpture reimagine familiar archetypes and landscapes with a sly sense of humor that evokes spirituality, psychedelics, nature, visionary poetry, modernist literature, epistemology of science, theories of the New Age, ethnobotany, reproductive history, and the afterlife. Often combining visual and textual elements, Birdie returns to bodily experience amid the alienation of modernity and technology with deep concern for the liberation of all sentient beings. She received an undergraduate degree in Philosophy and earned an MFA in Printmaking from New York University.